Gardening

When Fiorella was a child in Ohio, her family grew vegetables in a communal garden--corn and cucumbers and the like.  Fio remembers her mother doing a lot of canning.  When the family moved to Texas, her parents started up a garden in the backyard behind the garage, where the previous owners had kept a horse.  Back then, everyone in the neighborhood had vegetable gardens and fruit trees of some sort, and bushel baskets of excess regularly crossed the street.

Later, the vegetable garden was allowed to grass over, and Mother redirected her agricultural instincts to lining the house and back yard with flowers. 

Fio and husband have never planted a vegetable garden, but they have sodded lawns, landscaped with trees and bushes, and hosted a vast array of indoor plants, from a venus fly-trap to a peace lily.  But Fio's favorite is the Christmas tree, and it's a fake.